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grandfather the Utopian world that ought to be established. Something ideally enchanting, but which made no allowance for the inconsistencies of human nature or for unexpected contingencies. Operations of war never did go the way they were planned. Not even at Zeebrugge, one of the best-planned operations in history, had the attack been able to proceed mechanically; if it had, he would never have had the opportunity of winning the blue-and-red ribbon which he wore. And, of all operations of war, a surprise at dawn was the trickiest of the lot. When Nickleby brought his beautiful paper scheme to him for his approval, he had permitted himself to smile, and the smile had nettled Nickleby, just the way the grandfather’s smile of toleration would nettle the Utopian young man. But he had let him go on with it; it was just as well for his officers to familiarize themselves with the problems and the objectives of this particular operation, and this was as good a way as any other, as long as their minds remained flexible enough to deal with the inevitable emergencies when they arose.
    Nickleby had finished his explanations now and everyone was looking to Crowe for further remarks. He fumbled for his pipe to give himself time to arrange in his mind what he was going to say, and he grinned benevolently at these young men as he filled it and lit it, and he punctuated his opening words with puffs of smoke, paying close attention to pressing down the burning tobacco. He could remember his own father making just the same gestures. It was queer being forty-two; when he was by himself he felt just the same as he did when he was twenty, but put him with all these young people who treated him as if he were sixty and for the life of him he could not prevent himself from acting like it. It was partly due to his rank, of course; this enforced senility was the penalty he had to pay for the four gold stripes on his arm.
    ‘Nothing’ - puff - ‘is sure’ - puff - ‘in a sea fight beyond all others, but’ - puff - ‘no captain can do very wrong’ - puff - ‘if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy’ - puff. ‘Who wrote that, Rowles?’
    ‘Nelson, sir,’ said Rowles promptly, and Crowe found himself feeling like a schoolmaster now, instead of a father.
    ‘It says exactly what I want to say,’ said Crowe, ‘and better than I can say it for myself. Everyone quite clear on what he has to do? Very good, then, gentlemen, I think that will do.’ There was no need for any claptrap appeal to sentiment, fine phrases or historic utterances. Not with those men.
    The summer Mediterranean produced a summer storm that night while the Twentieth Flotilla was making its way towards Crotona, and, as is the way with the summer Mediterranean, it took only a short blow to raise a nasty lumpy sea. Crowe, eating his dinner with his staff, noticed the increased motion immediately. The fiddles were already on the tables to prevent the crockery from sliding clean off, and the tablecloth had already been damped to provide enough friction to keep the things more or less in their places, but these precautions were already insufficient.
    Holby hurriedly excused himself and left the cabin - the poor fellow was already as sick as a dog in any kind of sea. Crowe cocked an inquiring eyebrow at Rowles.
    ‘Glass is dropping fast, sir,’ said Rowles. ‘This is going to be a lot worse before it gets better.’
    ‘It might have let us finish our dinner in peace,’ grumbled Crowe, and regretted the speech a moment later. He realized that there was at least one profound difference between himself at forty two and himself at twenty; dinner was much more important nowadays, and he had lost the lighthearted acceptance of the picnic meals served perforce in a destroyer in a heavy sea.
    An eighteen-hundred-ton destroyer making thirty knots in rough water behaves in a way to be expected of a ship of her design. The proportion of her length to her breadth is very like